Are you tired of the same old warmers, games and activities? This is the place to be! This blog displays a collection of top creative ideas taken from the best sites and sources to spice up your classes and involve your students in fun activities dealing with different skills and grammar topics. Welcome aboard!

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Great outdoors activity aqnd specially designed for young kids! Fun garanteed!

Level: Basic

Skill: Speaking

Materials needed: a wand and a jar with bubble solution

Instructions:

Individual students or members of each team are given a jar with bubble solution and a wand. The teacher calls out a category of nouns, adjectives, or verbs as a student begins to blow bubbles. That sudent, or another member of the team, tries to say as many words as s/he can that pertain to that category before all the bubbles disappear. If this is played as a competition between teams, the team that is able to say the most words receives a point.

Source: "Activities for the ESL Classroom Brasil 2010"- David Malatesta

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Material needed: slips with short instructions for each pair of students

Instructions:

On slips of paper write short instructions (ex: SING A SONG/SEE A GHOST/LAUGH/APOLOGIZE/SAY I LOVE YOU/ANSWER THE PHONE/SAY YOU ARE ANGRY/START CRYING/SAY I HATE YOU/ASK FOR ADVICE/ETC). Divide students into pairs and give them a situation (ex: STANDING IN LINE AT A SUPERMARKET/STANDING IN LINE AT A BANK/AT A COORPORATE PICNIC/AT A WEDDING/ON AN AIRPLANE/ETC). They should begin a normal conversation, but periodically each student should pick up one of the slips of paper and immediately follow the instruction. The other student must react appropriately to the interruption and then continue with the conversation.

Source: adapted from "Activities for the ESL Classroom Brasil 2010"- David Malatesta

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Here is a nice way to start a class. It can be used as a speaking or writing activity!

Level: intermediate or upper

Skill: speaking or writing

Material needed: bag with different objects

Instructions:

Students grab an object out of a bag. Ask them to pretend that this object is one of the most important things in the world to them. They should mention the history behind it and what it means to them. Students can either talk about the object or write a short paragraph explaining it.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Get your students moving, acting, laughing and practicing grammar with this simple idea!

Level: basic

Grammar topics: present continuous and adverbs of manner

Skill: speaking

Material needed: slips with verbs and adverbs

Instructions:

Prepare two sets of flashcards, half with verbs and half with adverbs. Call a student to come to the front and select one card from each set.The student mimes the phrase and the class has to guess the verb and adverb by saying a complete sentence e.g “ She is cooking slowly” “He is dancing angrily”.

This can be turned into a game or competition if you divide the class into different groups!

Some verbs that can be used: COOK/RUN/SPEAK/SING/WALK/DANCE/SLEEP/WRITE/SWIM/CRY

Some adverbs that can be used: SLOWLY/FAST/HAPPILY/SADLY/ANGRILY/CAREFULLY/FUNILLY/QUIETLY/SERIOUSLY/BEAUTIFULLY

Sunday, October 2, 2011

How about practicing the first conditional in a different and fun way? Here is an activity to practice it dealing with optimistic and pessimistic views.

Level: basic or intermediate

Grammar point: first conditional

Skills: listening/reading and speaking

Material needed: situations provided by the teacher

Instructions:

Pair up students and assign each one a role: the optimistic and the pessimistic. Explain that the teacher is going to give them a situation (paper slips, board or orally) and that each one should come up with a sentence in the first conditional that would reflect the role assigned to them. As a wrap-up, elicit from the whole class some of their sentences, so that the other classmates can listen to them too.

Suggestions:

a) You don`t know if you should go to a concert tonight.

b) You have saved some money and you are thinking about buying a car.

c) Someone offered you a ride to go to school/work.

d) You were offered a great opportunity to live/work/study abroad for a while.

e) To become or not to become a vegetarian? That`s the question!

f) You`ve lived all your life in a flat. Now, you are considering moving to a house.

g) You`ve been in the same job for more than 10 years and you have a prestigious positon in the company. A friend offered you a new job in a recently opened business for a much better salary. You are considering taking the offer.

h) You and your friends are discussing the pros and cons of becoming a famous celebrity.

Vânia Rodrigues has been an EFL teacher for 22 years, 17 of which at a Binational Center in Brazil, Casa Thomas Jefferson. She has been a teacher, a Course Supervisor and is currently a Deputy Academic Coordinator at CTJ. She holds an M.A in Applied Linguistics from the Universidade de Brasília. Her main interest relates to nonverbal teacher-student communication.

Vinicius Lemos has been an English teacher for 17 years. He holds a B.A in Letras-Inglês (English Language and Literature) from Universidade de Brasília (UnB) and has been an EFL teacher at Casa Thomas Jefferson, Brasília, Brazil, for 11 years. He was a presenter at the 2010 TESOL Conference in Boston, USA ,at the 2011 ABS International Conference in Montevideo, Uruguay,at the 2012 TESOL Conference in Philadelphia ,USA and at the 2013 TESOL Conference in Dallas, USA.

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